The King of Darkness | ✔️

Chapter Eight

I can't help my scream that rips through the air. I begin thrashing as insurmountable pain works its way through my body. Fire... it's like my body is on fire.

"I'm going to need you to hold her down," the botanist says, to whom I have no idea. However, as soon as I feel his coldness touch my skin, I know exactly who it is. My body immediately becomes immobilised and I almost thank Darian.

My eyes are screwed so fiercely shut that I can see stars. I can see the stars that halo the mountain tops, I can see the stars that remind me of my father... the stars I cannot escape.

"Please... I can't - do this," I sob, the pain is too much for me to bear. I'm soon to be rendered unconscious if this carries on.

"Aelin, it's going to kill her," Serene warns and I feel the darkness trying to coax me its way but I hold on to that small tether inside of me that won't go down without a fight. I hold on even as my hands begin to slip and death beckons for me to let go.

"If you don't shut your mouth then it will end up killing her," Aelin grits her teeth and I wish to tell them all to stop the unnecessary chatter.

I am silently begging to hold onto the tether that is my survival but I can feel my grip beginning to slip - my mind beginning to tire. Everything in me is screaming to hold on, to not give up but it's hard when you know that there is a small part of you that has always wanted to give up.

"I'm sorry," I whimper as the tether slips from my hands and flies away into the night and I am welcomed by a starless sky - its arms open wide for me.

I step into its embrace and let it swallow me whole. The darkness comforts me in every way as a wave of calmness washes over me and I finally feel at peace. All of the pain dissipates and I feel free.

Free of everything, free of life and its complications.

I bathe in the darkness until I feel nothing... until I am nothing.

"Nova?" an old man's voice questions as a piercing light blinds me. I look down and see my skin covered in a wondrous golden glow. "It's you?" the voice sounds so familiar.

Ever so slowly I lift my head until my eyes meet those kind, brown ones. Those brown ones that I felt safe in as a child. "Father?" the word almost doesn't make it out of me, the disbelief clear as day in my voice.

"Nova, heavens it's you," his eyes glimmer with tears, mine mirroring his. The ache in my chest ceases and I run into my father's arms, although I cannot feel him. I cannot feel his embrace nor be comforted by it.

"Why are you here... how are you here?" I ask, completely astonished and pull away. He stops - completely frozen in place.

"You killed him," another voice says and my head whips in the direction from which I heard it. There she stands... Anith, Goddess of Light. Every part of her is glowing. Her unruly, long hair is unbound and cascading down her - blending with the beautiful floor-length gown that hugs her body. The sight leaving me utterly speechless.

I look back to my father, his skin is now drained of colour and his face void of any emotion that had once been there and my heart shatters all over again.

"You're lying," I dare say and Anith begins to step towards me but I retract, trying to keep as much space between us as possible. "You're not real... you're not here," I whisper in means to reassure myself more than anything else.

"My child, I know that you feel guilty but there is a reason for this. There are reasons for all of this," her soft voice flows through the endless whiteness that surrounds us.